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Old 2nd February 2007   #4
MASSIVE Master
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Quote:
It's how this 'driving' process takes place that I don't understand. How do you feed the signal back into a sound card A/D at a level high enough to make it clip by the A/D, but not by the unit doing the feeding?
Not that I'm a big fan of the whole "clipping" thing (it's not the only way to skin a cat, although I admit guilt to some extent) -- Even with conservatively calibrated converters (say, -18, which seems fairly standard for many units) I can't think of too many pieces of analog gear that can't go well beyond full-scale before it clips.

Whether the gear passes a quality signal at that level is another story - Some gear does - There's a reason why many "mastering grade" (for lack of a better term) pieces are so pricey... Some gear doesn't.

Just because something isn't clipping doesn't mean it isn't distorting rather badly - Ask almost any cheap mic preamp or compressor that claims +24 but sounds like crap at +12.
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John Scrip - Massive Mastering, LLC - www.massivemastering.com

Spoon-feed a newb some answer and he'll mix for a day -
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